Day by Day
by Chewing Gum
Summary: Responses to KCS’s daily prompts. 23 - The squeaky wheel gets the greased pan; a prompt/221b hybrid. 24 - There are some women who just can't pull off a decent hat. 25 - How many papers must a man go through 26 - Another 221b. Technology is overrated.
1. By Any Other Name

"Èmile?"

Violet Holmes could not help but glare slightly at her elder son as she cradled her newborn close to her. She loved Mycroft, of course, that was a mother's duty, but there were times when he would act as no seven-year-old child could or should.

"Yes, Èmile," she replied, desperately trying not to snip.

"With the accented 'e' and everything?"

"_Yes_. Sherlock Èmile Holmes, don't you like it? Sherlock for this blond hair of his, Èmile for his great-uncle Èmile Vernet. Who knows? Perhaps he will grow up to be a great painter."

The somewhat pudgy boy rolled his eyes. "My middle name is Sigerson, but I've yet to produce any wonderful poetry."

"Mycroft, honestly, can you not smile once for no reason at all? You have a healthy baby brother, so who cares what his name is?

Mycroft Sigerson Holmes regarded Sherlock Èmile Holmes with the expression of a sceptic. "It will be a pain to type on a conventional typewriter. And they're apt to murder him once he goes to boarding school."

"He's right, you know," put in the father of the boys, previously silent. He remembered why when his wife threw a venomous glare his way.


	2. Hindsight

I met Sherlock Holmes when we were sixteen and I had transferred to his boarding school. We both belonged to the boxing club, and I had the misfortune of being matched with him in my first sparring match. Holmes never much understood the purpose of sparring, and took its goals as that of a real match; to knock ones opponent ass over backwards.

He succeeded, in case you were wondering. Holmes was a whirling dervish of pure energy housed in a deceptively wiry frame, and I, usually slower but harder hitting, had taken three good shots before I knew what was happening. My nose bled for nearly an hour and I heard bells for more than a week. I was paired with him many times over the two years I stuck with that damn club. Was it any wonder my profession as an adult was bandaging?

Our instructor's punishment for any boy who hurt his opponent more than he should was to accompany him to the nurse's office. Holmes and I spent a great deal of time there. We did not talk about much, but what we did talk of thoroughly convinced me that this individual was skipping merrily along the line that separated praised genius from foaming lunatic, weaving like a crab to either side whenever it suited him.

What tore it for me was the Parent's Day when he discreetly informed my father that if he was going to carry on an affair, he ought to do his own laundry, but as my mother already knew there wasn't much point in doing it now. But then, she was not to be mourned for, for me having blonde hair when both my parents had red was rather interesting, according to the little savant.

I was ordered to keep my distance from him. I did not need to be told twice. This advice came just in time, for a week later several of those who might be called his friends under different circumstances were disciplined alongside him when he put the chemistry lab out of commission for several months.

I will spare you the story of our graduation ceremony.

I feared for my life when I saw him walk into Bart's. Had I not needed my salary (my parents would not help me in that respect, as they were in the middle of a very costly divorce), I would have walked out of there, but instead comforted myself with the thought that the chemistry labs were far out of my usual way. On his first day, he approached me and suggested that it would be in my best interest to regard him as a casual acquaintance. Again, I did not need to be told twice. Truthfully, I did not need to be told once. But it seemed that Master Holmes had at least learned to contain himself, for no trouble came from his presence there (that I knew of, in any case). His chemistry had greatly improved, too, judging by the utter lack of evacuations.

Perhaps it was cruel of me to suggest him as a roommate to poor Dr. Watson, but Holmes had been starting to hint that I might like to share rooms with him, and my sanity was the largest part of my estate. I would have done anything to throw that bloodhound off my scent.

If I was so ill at ease around Holmes, you may ask, why do I muse upon him now? It had been two years since that evidently fateful day. The reason, my reader, is that I met both he and Dr. Watson again recently.

I was sitting in a very quaint café that had wonderful pastries and even better tea. I had been introduced to it by a lovely nurse I had come to see at least twice a week for the last several months, and it was her I was there to meet although she was running late (another extended shift, likely; they worked those poor girls half to death). I was sipping at my tea and holding up my pocket watch to check the time when I heard a loud, sharp noise and suddenly my watch was no longer attached to the chain and my hand was bleeding shallowly.

It took me a moment to realize that I had just nearly been seriously wounded, and had only avoided it though an incomprehensible amount of luck.

"Stamford!" There was a voice I had hoped to never again call my name. A fraction of a second later, two men tackled me to the ground sending the table flying and the contents of the milk pitcher sloshing into my nostrils. I heard two more gunshots.

It was our graduation ceremony all over again.

"Dreadfully sorry, Stamford," panted Dr. Watson, Holmes already up and running again. "No further danger to you, old chap. Wrong place at the wrong time. We'll have to share a drink sometime!" With that he was gone again. There were no more shots. I had not even seen who or what was firing them.

My lovely Beatrice tended my wounds, bandaging the bullet wound and applying ice to the goose egg I had gotten when Holmes had thrown me to the ground with every ounce of his childhood energy. She also helped me flush the last of the milk out of my nasal cavities. A very sympathetic woman, my Beatrice. I'm saving for a ring as we speak.

They say that together, Holmes and Watson have done society a world of good. Having only read a few of their exploits, I cannot say if this is true. I can tell you, however, that when I saw Dr. Watson following the dervish without a single ounce of hesitation, ready to support him in any endeavour no matter how insane, I could not help but feel that I had created a monster.


	3. Good Intentions

It was raining outside. Not merely raining casually, either; it was raining with a purpose. Huge, contained dollops of moisture were flung about by the whistling, screaming wind and were thrown against our window with a sound that would have been near sickening had it not been happening several times a second for the last four hours. I imagined the sound of that particular rain on the window would be similar to fat slugs being hurled into the pane.

There are times when an imaginative mind is a bit of a curse.

It was not my imagination I was cursing that night but rather the wretched bullet that had torn through my shoulder in that hellish war zone. Although the bullet itself, or most of it in any case, was long gone and left out in the field to rust away, its sentiment lived on, circling like a shark around my shoulder blade and, so like a shark, going into a frenzy when dampness, its blood, threw its scent into its vicinity. The warm fire blazing in the hearth did nothing to subdue the creature.

I was attempting to write, and yet the pain was relentless. It had flown smoothly from the soft allegro of the dull aching I was apt to feel even in bone dry weather to the adagio of the odd pang that refused to be ignored and sent my pen skittering before crashing into a crescendo of a fiery throbbing that caused me to grit my teeth slightly and made every word on the page a word past my current comprehension.

"I do not need my powers to perceive the night is causing you grief, my dear fellow," spoke Holmes from his worktable, not fiddling about with bubbling chemicals or flickering burners any longer but rather working the marble mortar and pestle that I recalled his brother had gifted to him last Christmas. It was the first time I had personally seen him use it, yet I could see some signs of wear.

I only murmured a reply, not risking my tongue to stay tame if I spoke too much. I was normally a very even-tempered man, many would attest to that, yet the same fiery pain that charred me so could also burn away at my long fuse until it reached my much-hidden powder keg. Insulting and snapping at my dearest friend would cause no relief, and thus it was easier to keep my mouth closed than risk an outburst.

No longer jesting myself that I was being anywhere near productive, I watched as Holmes drained the powder he had been mashing at into a glass container of ingredients unidentifiable, adding a small vial of what looked to be tiny shavings of wax and folding and mixing the lot with a glass rod.

"What I am making may interest you, Watson," he spoke again, holding the concoction up to the light for to see it better. It was the colour of sickly salmon, a beige pink that, if I saw in foodstuff, I would not have touched for fear of a night spent turning my stomach inside out. "It so happens I need a test subject with muscle or skeletal pain."

I had learned over the years that a glimmer of hope for relief of my pain was a foolish reason to head down a path. "I am not eating that, Holmes. Not if it heals my shoulder _and_ allows me to walk through walls."

"Eat it?" chuckled Holmes, striding across the room (how I loathed him for his perfect mobility!) and coming to sit on the sofa, gesturing for me to come. "I would not encourage it nor permit it. I don't know if it would kill a man, but it most certainly would not be pleasant. No, this is a salve, for lack of a more appropriate term. It is strictly for external use only, but it should cause some temporary relief."

"What on earth do you mean, 'for lack of a more appropriate term'?" I questioned, rising and then grimacing, holding in a cry of distress with all of my spirit. Movement always brought the most pain just when I believed it could not get any worse. When I was in such dire straits, it became hard to remember the day before when every moment had not been pure agony let alone before the original injury even occurred, when pain was not a constant companion riding along inside my body and causing me havoc.

Holmes made a move to help me but I waved him off and managed my way to the sofa. My leg was aching as well, making my every movement as awkward as a drunk's, but an ache was as easily ignored compared to my shoulder as a chipped brick was to a falling steeple.

"Well you see, the very definition of a salve is to soothe something," Holmes began, the expression on his face one of a child about to open a promising-looking birthday present. "This… isn't exactly something to soothe. Its most active ingredient is capsaicin, a vegetable alkaloid isolated from extremely potent peppers; it's a very strong irritant to most mammals. It does, however, cause the sensation of heat, which can soothe pain in muscles and joints."

I paused, halfway done unbuttoning my shirt and wondering if I should button it back up. Suddenly, that sickly salmon paste looked much more threatening. "Holmes… Isn't capsaicin being experimented with as an airborne non-lethal weapon?"

"In very small doses it's also used to treat inadequate secretion of the digestive fluids, but doesn't the press always print the more gruesome stories? It's not going anywhere near your eyes or mouth, Watson. Come, now, be a sport."

After four years in his companionship, I supposed I had to have some degree of trust for the man, and so I slid my shirt off my shoulders, exposing the patch of my skin bearing the twisting, puckered scar. Why did injuries in reality never heal neatly and suavely as they did in fiction?

I had noticed that Holmes had dipped a frayed but clean cloth in the concoction rather than use his bare hands, a hint that this might not be the most brilliant idea. When he spread it evenly across my shoulder, however, there was only the feeling of something slimy on me.

"I don't think it's working, Holmes," I sighed, hoping the poor man would not be let down. With childish enthusiasm often came childish disappointment.

"Wait for it, Watson…" I could not see his face the way I was turned, but I imagine he was grinning like a six-year-old. A somewhat deranged six-year-old.

My friend was so very rarely wrong. Within seconds I began to feel the tingling of the salve (for lack of a more appropriate term) and then the steady, powerful burning. It caused a mild degree of pain, that I will not deny, but the pure, centred heat was banishing the reminiscences of my battle wound more than any hot water bottle or steaming bath ever had. Despite myself, I gave a deep sigh of relief. The pain was there, yet it was greatly eased.

"Holmes… Thank you…" I murmured, looking over my shoulder to see him scribbling notes on my condition. "This feels… Well, wonderful wouldn't be accurate, but it relieved my agony a great deal. You truly are a genius."

"Oh, I know that," dismissed the man, taking out his pocket watch. "We'll have to wash that off in five minutes. The feeling will linger long after the salve is gone, but the actual mixture cannot remain on the skin long."

I blinked. "Why not?"

Holmes rolled up his shirtsleeve, displaying an angry-looking streak spanning from his elbow to his wrist of red skin that looked like it had come from a chemical burn. "Because this is what happens when one leaves it on for six minutes."


	4. Blood

_AN: This takes place during "The Girl", around five months after Mycroft and Ann Marie are married._

"I dislike you, and God knows you dislike me, but as a gentleman I cannot abide with someone hurting a defenceless woman."

Ann Marie blinked, and then blinked again. This was not what she had expected when her brother-in-law of five months had shown up on her stoop asking to be let in. After a moment of trying to decipher what this could possibly mean, she forfeited.

"Sherlock, what on earth are you talking about?" she sighed, heading into the sitting room. If she was lucky, perhaps he would show himself out after fulfilling his daily quota of annoyance.

It was simply not her day. He followed her like a leech after warm blood. "That bruise on your face faded quickly, but not so quickly that I didn't…" Holmes felt something sharp on his shin. He looked down to see a cream-coloured ball of fluff with a tail and two blue eyes poking out of it. "You look familiar."

"I suppose I ought to thank you, for helping Mycroft get him," Ann Marie admitted, prying the tiny kitten off of his leg and letting him bat at her ringlets instead. He never once came close to clawing her as he did so; he was a rather careful little monster. "I've named him Marco Polo."

"Charming. He interrupted me. Four days ago you had a thin bruise alongside your nose spanning from the top of your eye nearly to your lip. Someone hit you with a door. It's not even entirely faded now."

Big brown eyes rolled in a weary arch, rubbing the still-tender area of her face. "Have you ever met my friend Catherine Deane? I think you too would get along famously. She was here about a week ago, and she thought it would be funny to startle me by sending the door flying out… I was closer than she thought and it caught me in the face. Knocked me off my feet for a moment, but I didn't even get a nosebleed." She paused, delicate face folding into a scowl. "Do you actually think your own brother would hurt me?"

"Not Mycroft, no, but someone else you were seeing."

"I would _never_…!"

"Let's put your virtue aside for a moment. You _did_ get a nosebleed. When I was here four days ago, I took a look around your laundry room while you were finding the papers Mycroft left for me. Meticulous thing that you are, it was rather easy to tell which article was from which day. Merely match the handkerchief to the pile containing the dress I knew you were wearing that day you acquired the bruise. I am an expert on bruising, and my memory is as sharp as a knife"

Another blink. "Handkerchief…?" Then something lit up on her face. "Oh…! You mean Catherine's handkerchief!"

"No, it was _your's_," he replied, as if attempting to teach a slow child. "It was your stitching on it. And there was blood on it at one point. There was discolouration consistent with heavily washed blood, and slight fraying where someone had scrubbed hard."

"It was my stitching because I made it for her, along with a few others, for Christmas last year. And that wasn't blood, Sherlock, that was lipstick. She left it here for me to clean because her father would have killed her if he knew she wore makeup like that. But then, even that shade was dark for her, the reason she wiped it off. She should have used something other than a white handkerchief, I _told_ her that…"

"No, it wasn't lipstick, it was _blood_. I _know_ it was blood because I took some of the fibres from it and performed my haemoglobin test! It was positive and it is flawless and therefore it was blood!" His temper was beginning to wear. Barking at an uncooperative criminal was one thing, but talking to this girl was like talking to a yapping puppy; annoying, but too adorable and fragile to truly shout at.

The little Siamese kitten starting to mewl, and Ann Marie shifted him in her arms, stroking his tiny head with two fingers. "I've always wondered… Whenever I'm at your flat you're doing some sort of experiment, and you always talk with Mycroft about chemical evidence, but I've been reading the Strand stories and none of those tests are mentioned much."

It was Holmes's turn to roll his eyes. Honestly, if she and his brother ever reproduced the children were likely to be insane, the mates were so different.

"Because, apparently, they're dull to anyone outside the academic community. Watson's editors told him in order to appeal to a broader audience, he has to replace most of my chemical tests with footwork and rankling witnesses whenever possible because it's much more exiting. Therefore, in the stories my chemicals usually only get mentioned when they're being unpredictable and annoying Mrs. Hudson. Can we discuss the matter at hand? You are seeing someone other than my brother, and he hit you with a door hard enough to make your nose bleed. Let's drop this story of lipstick and discuss that."

She did not reply vocally, but rather plopped the kitten onto his shoulder, gestured for him to stay (whether this was for him or the cat, Holmes did not know), and turned on her heel, out of the room and up the stairs, skirts swishing after her.

The detective raised a brow as ice blue eyes met his. "Hello…"

Marco Polo sniffed him briefly and then sneezed in his face. Obviously, the animal was not a fan of his tobacco brand.

When Ann Marie returned, the cat was curled up in one of the armchairs and her brother-in-law was wiping off his face with a handkerchief of his own.

"Here," she frowned, displaying the metallic tube to him, opening it to reveal the red makeup that bore a resemblance to blood in colour. It was perfumed; the detective could smell the sickly sweet scent from where he stood. "That's the lipstick. Take it and test it with that hemispherical or what-have-you test of yours. If it turns out positive, then you'll have to admit I'm telling the truth. And Sherlock? For the record, I rather _like_ Mycroft. In fact, you might say I love him, and while he doesn't love me quite yet, I hope that some day very soon he does. Now, what is more believable? That I am telling the truth or that I am going behind his back, a situation you would relish because it would prove your theory that all women are snakes and you are the only trustworthy person in your brother's life?"

Holmes was not sure what surprised him most; that the mouse of a girl had actually straightened her neck and stood up to him or the fact that he saw truth in what she had said.

But his test… That never lied… Haemoglobin had been on that handkerchief.

__

The test picks up haemoglobin,

spoke up the voice inside of him. _Who's to say that it's human haemoglobin?_

He took the lipstick from her hand. "Is this a cheaper brand?"

"I… I don't know. I don't wear it myself. I suppose it would be, though. Look how it's flaking. Even I know good makeup shouldn't do that."

"A lot of makeup has fish oil in it to give it that beautiful sheen… But a cheap company would not simply buy the fish oil. I think you ought to advise your friend towards another brand; looks like they merely grind up the guts and add a little, adding a heaping amount of perfume to mask the scent. My test is better than I thought, for it picked up the miniscule amount of fish blood."

With a look of pure disgust, the girl capped the tube and placed it on the end table.

"I… I apologize for my accusations, girl." Dear lord, it was actually hurting him to admit his fault. "I am in a dry spell for cases. I suppose I leapt to conclusions to give myself something to do." _And to convince yourself that this girl meant nothing to Mycroft, _spoke up that voice again. _Which she may or may not._

"Just don't accuse me of doing that again, Sherlock." Her normally cheery face was as serious as marble. "I am not like that, and I want no rumours that I am."

He nodded, although he did not entirely believe it for at least several more months. Once he did believe it, it was far too late to stop it.


	5. A Bird in the Hand

Although Watson would never stoop to injecting poison into his bloodstream, he had more in common with his friend's despise of boredom than he ever liked to admit.

He had never had that urge, that hunger for the unknown before going to war, but living not only every day but every second as if it could be ones last upon earth made an impact on a solider, and when that solider became a civilian, one of two things happened; he grew to enjoy the stable, simple moments all the more, or he needed risks and wagers every so often to keep his heart from slowing to a standstill.

Watson always believed he was the former, and during his recovering months it seemed he was. As he grew stronger and his body and mind grew restless, however, he found himself wishing for those little thrills, those tiny slices of heightened life, that the heartless war had gifted onto its participants to ease the agony of bloodshed.

Introducing Sherlock Holmes. After a few cases, those still, silent moments again gained their sheen, his chest would pound as the pair raced the concept of evil itself across the London cobblestones, and although bullets still flew and there was more than the occasional body, his mind was as far away from Afghanistan as it had ever been.

But there were stretches with no clients, or rather no clients deemed interesting by The Master, and those were the times when the moments were torture rather than reward. Those were the times when his heart needed an artificial jolt. Not the drink. Never the drink. Not after his brother's demise. He would take lager and brandy and sometimes rum, but that was not what made his ears hum.

Gambling had been discovered through simple card games with fellow veterans, the games secondary to the talks they had. It helped many people through it, talking. To Watson, however, it was the thrill of not knowing what cards your neighbour had, or what cards one might have next, but having to make a decision based on facts that were not known.

War, but only currency was lost, not young men.

It would have been a full-blown addiction were it not for Holmes, just as the narcotic use would have been a true problem were it not for Watson. Thankfully, however, one had the other and the other had the one, and thus the two functioned more or less as they should.

It was a small, oddly-assembled crowd in the club that night. Nearly two in the morning on a Sunday, the establishment was empty save for Watson, another old soldier, a contractor with a particular fondness for the bottle when his wife was at least four blocks away (she was currently visiting her sister in Germany), and a boy's school professor in his first year of teaching who found that using up his bad luck playing cards would stop him from strangling his insolent students for another week.

"Doc, you're starting to bet a little high…" muttered the other former solider, nevertheless raising his wager. He had returned from war minus his right foot up to the knee to find that his loving wife had not left him, as so many did, but that her job as a secretary at an investment firm had led to her becoming a very hushed-up advisor to the firm. After all, her father had been one of the best brokers in the city. He had no shortage of money thanks to his precious. "Thought you said you'd had a dry spell."

"Just sold another manuscript to the Strand," grumbled Watson, not drunk but almost, _almost_, wishing he was. "Are we discussing our financial matters or are we playing cards?"

"Too rich for me," the professor put in. It might of well have been his motto. He was sitting on a few manuscripts, but until he sold that cards were a hobby that had to be fed sparingly.

"Tell yous all whats…" slurred the contractor, thumbing through pound notes. "I'm going to show yous ladies a game the way it should ought to be!"

Watson was about to respond with his wallet when the door flew open to reveal a rather wet detective, his face as long as a bloodhound's. Apparently it was raining out.

"You said to come get you at two," stated Holmes. He had not been at the needle tonight because he had made a promise to collect his friend at the predetermined time.

"Two? Really? Honestly, I'm sure I said three… Ah, well, one more hand…"

"It's two. Mrs. Hudson has been worrying," He seized his protesting friend by the collar, yanking him bout of his chair and all but dragging him out the door, knowing that he would thank him the next morning. He was not about to let his friend blow his entire first payment from his latest works on petty cards.

The three remainders stared at the door. They had never seen what Holmes referred to juvenilely as a broken curfew.

"I hate to talk 'bout another man's familys," spoke up the drunken contractor. "But Doctor's Watson's wife is not at _all _attractive."


	6. Gardening

On the second day in my new flat on Baker Street, a box was delivered by a courier. It was very clearly marked "This Side Up" with an arrow and "Fragile" in a very familiar pen and hand. My curious whetted already by the fact that my brother Mycroft had clearly sent this, I took it to my bedroom, nodding to the doctor, who was trying to arrange his numerous books in the case, as I passed him.

I did not quite know what to expect when I slit the cardboard and removed the box, but it had not been a potted plant. Nevertheless, there it sat in a simple but tasteful blue pot, rather bush-like in structure, with glossy leaves of deep, deep green and wood a rather interesting shade of brown.

There had been a short note stuck into the soil, which I plucked out and dusted off before reading.

__

S,

I thought your new residence could use a touch of colour. This particular plant is a Crassula ovata, and because one of its common names is "Friendship Tree", I thought it appropriate to herald the start of a new relationship between you and your flatmate. Heavens knows you need more social interaction.

It is supposedly a very hardy little plant, so with sunlight, occasional pruning, and water every eight or ten days, it should thrive. Best of luck, both with the plant and your roommate.

M.

I could not help but smile and shake my head. Of course Brother Mycroft was overjoyed to the point of a gift; the discovery of a fellow to split the rent with meant that elder brother was now free from either loaning me money that would no doubt pull a disappearing act or, even worse, having to play host in the spotless museum he called his home to one of the messiest creatures outside the gates of the London Zoo.

I always found it best to be honest about my worst traits. It made the application of my good traits all the more important.

When I re-entered the sitting room, Dr. Watson was watching me, obviously wondering what the package had contained. Curiosity was something I valued in a friend, so perhaps my brother's gift truly was a symbol of things to come.

"A housewarming gift from a colleague," I explained. It was easier not to get into the matter of family when we had just met.

"It has quite a unique look," commented the doctor with an amiable smile.

"My colleague has a rather unique view, so I am hardly surprised." I placed the pot on the windowsill where it was sure to get plenty of sun. I had not been the luckiest person in the world when it came to plants or friendships, Mycroft knew this well, but perhaps he was trying to say that this could be a fresh start for me, one in which I was not a complete hermit. One in which I did not kill all that performed photosynthesis.

Two months passed in our homey lodgings. We came to know the sainted Mrs. Hudson and her excellent cooking, and we came to test her patience to the very limits of her sanity. We came to know each other little by little, and we came to see something we liked in one another. Watson began to gain his strength back, and I continued to build upon my consulting business, becoming hopeful for my future as a detective.

I suppose it honestly just slipped my mind. Plenty of things that I do not deem important tend to do just that. Perhaps I had thought that rain would sustain the plant (despite the fact that it was well under our roof, as it could remain on the sill when the windows were shut, as they always were when it rained).

The point is, when I finally thought of the thing two months later and glanced up from my work towards it, its leaves had turned a similar shade of brown as its wood.

With a bit of a frown I rose, plucking the pot up and taking it to the rubbish bin. Upon dumping out the former plant and the sand-like soil, however, a piece of paper made itself apparent. I fished it out and unfolded it.

__

S,

If you can read this note, it means that you did not water that plant even once in the time you had it. Some things never do change, do they, little brother? I do hope your friendship will fare better, but do let this be a reminder that, like plants, relationships do require the occasional effort. After all, some things must change.

M.

As meddling as ever, my brother. And who was he to talk about relationships when his closest one was likely with his club porter? And what changes had he undergone since settling in London?

"Holmes…?" called out the doctor as he ascended the stairs to our rooms. "Are you in?"

"Yes, Watson," I replied, meaning to toss out the note but choosing rather to fold it and tuck it into my pocket. _Do as I say, not as I do. _"Say, Watson, what would you say to dinner out tonight?"


	7. Fame

_"__It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.__"_

_- __Albert Einstein _

I looked up as Holmes entered our humble flat. Stormed in, however, would be a more appropriate description. As would stomped in, sulked in, and tore in slamming the door as hard as he could behind him, causing the framed pictures on the wall to rattle.

I had been seated by the fire, my healing leg propped up on a footstool. Knowing that oblivion was the best way to deal with his tempers, I looked up from my newspaper with casual interest. "Something amiss, Holmes…?"

"How perceptive of you," he shot back between clenched teeth, stalking to the mantle and fishing a large pinch of tobacco out of the frayed slipper toe, stuffing it into his most beloved pipe. "State your evidence."

"Honestly, you're a grown man and you get into such tantrums… What on earth has you so wound?" I sighed as I folded up the paper, knowing I could not even finish the article I had been in the middle of now.

"Your blasted romantic drivel is what has me so wound, Watson!" He attempted to light a match, but struck it so aggressively on the mantle that the thin wood snapped.

"You've expressed your distaste, Holmes, but you've also said you enjoy being a household name…"

"I would be perfectly fine with it if you'd just report the facts!" I do not think he realized that if I did that, my readers might as well read the police files. Holmes can never comprehend that not everyone enjoys them as much as he does. "Instead, you insist on turning me into this emotional… complex… _thing_…!"

I should have guessed, really. The first printing of "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" had just hit the stands, and he had obviously read the manuscript I had not let him see beforehand. "Holmes, you really did say those things…"

"I _know_ that, Watson! I was _there_! But just because I issue a string of drabbling sentiment during a time of stress doesn't mean that all of London has to know about it!"

I sighed. "You're a human being, not an automaton."

"Have you not been listening? People do not need to _know _that!"

"I'm sure they've figured it out by now…" I paused. Surely it was not only the story that had him acting like this. He was florid even by his standards. "There's something else to this, isn't there?"

"I was greeted on the street by two of your loyal readers. Women. Girls, actually. They wanted to express how sorry they felt for me because I couldn't get past my own cold, icy outer shell to find the loving, caring man on the inside." Although he had not yet lit it, he was gripping his pipe so tightly his knuckles were turning to white.

I tried to restrain my snickering. Helping a friend was not laughing at them, no matter how very much one wanted to. "Surely that's not so bad Holmes."

His grey eyes held a rather haunted look at the memory. "They hugged me, Watson."

"… Pardon?"

"They _hugged_ me. Both of them hugged me, assured me they saw the scared little boy beneath the façade of an emotionless hero, and went on their way. All I could do was stand there. It was several moments before my mind was truly functioning again."

I levered myself to my feet, keeping my weight off the leg that was still recovering from our latest adventure. I limped towards my friend. "Holmes…" Without another word, I threw my arms around him. Although strong, try as he might (and believe me, he did try) he could not wriggle free. "Better…?"

"Watson, if you don't release me on the count of three, I'll break every bone in your hand."

"Everyone needs to feel wanted sometimes, Holmes. Even you."

"One…"

"I am very proud to call you my friend."

"Two… I'll do it, Watson…!"

I released him, limping back to my chair and throwing myself down with an exhale of relief. No doubt I was smiling quite broadly.

Holmes was straightening his jacket, scowling furiously. Still, that haunted look was gone now. Deep, deep down, I think the scared little boy in him needed that. But like a proud little boy, he did not want anyone to know this.

"If this ends up in 'The Strand', I'll walk out that door and never come back. I mean it!"

I returned to my paper. "I know you will, Holmes."

I knew he never would.


	8. Fear

The best way to begin a career in solving crimes, Holmes had told me, was to witness the worst thing possible early in. Then, he reasoned, little else would ever bother you.

My career as a Scotland Yard inspector started with a smart-mouthed civilian some bigwig with the government asked to be allowed to tag along with us. Apparently he was considering a career with the Yard but was not convinced he would be suited to it. The bigwig, his brother apparently, wished him to have a steady job and prodded him into shadowing me for several days.

He was a sullen creature, silent except for when he was stating things about the scenes of the burglaries and petty employee thefts we visited that he could not possibly know. It was not until the cases were solved that I began to realize the things he said were true. He seemed unwilling to elaborate on his methods, however, choosing instead to lapse back into bored silence.

I began hoping that he would not join the force, for the sake of all of us on it. Yard officers must rely entirely on one another, even the ones we dislike, and this boy did not seem to care much about anyone other than himself.

Then a case in Whitechapel came up.

Whitechapel was to prostitution what Oxford was to shopping. Many more people were killed on Whitechapel than on Oxford, and the murders there never seemed to be a neat poison or one bullet hole through the head. Especially if the rats or stray dogs had gotten at the body… I myself had not yet been to a murder there, and I was not particularly keen on going.

"What's the matter?" remarked my shadow, the young pain, with one of those arrogant smirks only a young person can pull off. "Don't tell me you're afraid of a little blood, Inspector. Although I did hear some of your senior staff referring to you as a certain strain of poultry. Blast it, what was the name specifically…? It started with a 'c', I remember that much…"

I likely shouldn't have taken a civilian to the scene of a Whitechapel murder, but at this point I would have killed the boy himself to keep him from the ranks of Scotland Yard. Besides, no one, senior officer or not, was going to call G. Lestrade a chicken.

The body was not old enough to have been gnawed by rats. There was blood all over the floor. Not splattered, merely one large lake spanning the entire floor of the small apartment. The body was divided into sections and had been hung with twine from the ceiling to bleed out, hence the lake.

The boy joined me for a cigarette outside. I did not ask if he was too young to smoke, for if we did not get tobacco soon we were both liable to faint.

"Well…" I began, hoping the smoke was putting a bit of colour back into my face. "That was an experience."

He nodded, coughing. Obviously a still novice at the art of smoking. "The best way to begin a career in solving crimes is to witness the worst thing possible early in, I suppose… Then little else will ever bother you."

"So, boy, do you still want a career on the force?" I hesitated, knowing I should not encourage him but finding myself unable to lie. "You'd be good at it."

"I do not think so, Inspector… But I have a feeling our career paths will cross nonetheless."


	9. Penmanship

_Mr. S. Holmes,_

_We at Scotland Yard would like to inform you that, as much as we despise to admit it, you have been an invaluable help to the officials at our establishment and we hope to have you on future cases. Your unique methods have no doubt put many criminals behind bars and kept many innocents in front of them, and it cannot be underestimated how essential you are to solving the undeniably unusual cases that occasionally pass through our office._

_Part of being an ideal member of any team, however, is taking criticism well. As we do not have time in this letter to touch on all of your, shall we say, less than desirable habits (drug use, insulting Yard inspectors, teasing the tracking dogs, locking Yard inspectors in with the tracking dogs, and waiting until the right moment to dramatically reveal your conclusion rather than simply stating it when it occurs to you, to name a few), we will instead address only one focal point that has come to our attention on our latest case in which we collaborated with you._

_We believe we are familiar with the one we refer to._

_Let us make this very clear, Mr. Holmes; your handwriting is nothing sort of abominable, and if none of your schoolteachers over the years failed to point this out we plan to launch an investigation of the British education system. I suppose you can tell with your oh-so-far superior intellect where this letter is going._

_Holmes, if your sorry excuse for legible handwriting ever again causes us at Scotland Yard causes us to fill out an inaccurate warrant and as of such causes us to forcibly arrest a fifty-five-year-old widower in front of three of his grandchildren on the belief that he has murdered and decapitated three squires, you will have an idea how our smallest cells here at the Yard feel after one has spent roughly a month in one._

_All the best,_

_The Inspectors of Scotland Yard_

Holmes glanced over the doctor's shoulder where he was busy writing a letter to some obscure Scottish relative to assure him that he was not dead.

Unusually for a doctor, his handwriting was impeccably neat.


	10. Two for the Show

AN: This chapter was written specifically for my friend Lily. Hope you're feeling well enough to read this.

Has "Mrs. Sawyer" beaten Holmes in a fair match of wits or even a moderately level boxing match, the man likely would have been praised reluctantly by the detective, for while he did not enjoy losing honourably, he tolerated it with as much grace he possessed. Because the supposed old woman had given him the villain's slip, however, four years later he still muttered the name "Sawyer" when he became agitated.

We were attending the premiere of the English adaptation of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" in a cosy theatre tucked away in one of the many artistic nooks of the city. Holmes and I were quite enjoying the performance until the character of Mrs. Sorby, the old housekeeper, made her entrance.

She was a very familiar old and wrinkled woman with a characteristic limp and sensitivity to light.

"Holmes, we're in public," I whispered as soon as I had made the realization, grabbing at his arm as if he might leap up and rush the stage. "Don't you dare hurt him."

"Hurt him?" hissed back the slighted detective between desperately clenched teeth. "I'm going to _kill _him!"

I believe he waited until intermission not because of his mercy but because he had enough respect for the other performers that he would not disrupt their work. I was glad for this; I had no desire to be dragged out of the theatre in irons without seeing the ending.

Holmes returned mere moments before the lights dimmed on the second half. His knuckles were scraped and beginning to bruise.

Instead of the actors entering, before the curtain rose the manager of the theatre skirted nervously out into the limelight. "Er, ladies and gentlemen, due to, er, illness, the role of Mrs. Sorby will be played by Felicity Daye in the last half of the play. I am sorry for the substitution when the play is already in progress."

"You could be arrested for this, you know," I murmured as the curtains rose again.

"A criminal going to the police? Doubtful, dear fellow. He'll recover, but I promise you he won't be taking rings from strangers again. There used to be a time when a fellow could trust an actor…"


	11. Two Bits

"Spare a coupla bits, gov?"

I probably shouldn't have asked the slumping, skeletal man fuming on the park bench. He looked like someone had killed his dog and left him the paws, but my stomach was starting to gnaw on itself in want of a good hot meal, and I knew that on a grey day like this, most of the other people the boys hit up were going to be in just a bad of mood.

Stony grey eyes that made me flinch back a bit turned up to glare at me. "You know what you have in common with a thief, my boy? Both of you seem to be unable to take advantage of our society of free capitalism. Instead, you rely on others to make the money and then you just take it."

I bristled. Never talk back to a mark, that was a solid rule, because in the event of something bad going on the bobby is always going to believe a nice-dressed gentleman over a kid with patched-up trousers. "What, you think trudging all over the bleedin' city all day ain't work, mister? Gettin' kicked around by people 'o just don't wanna walk 'round ya?"

"A job is productive," scoffed the skeleton, his glare still set on me. "It benefits someone other than yourself. It provides society with a good or service."

Something had definitely made this man mad. He talked of a thief, so maybe he had been robbed? Might have been one of my friends, maybe that was why he was being a little hostile to me. But then, he hadn't called for the police yet…

I thought of mentioning all the others who benefited from the money I brought back, but decided it was better to keep my trap shut. Didn't want the government peeking in on us, hauling us off to orphanages. The streets were better than most public orphanages.

"Gov, I ain't lazy, just unlucky. You got a job for me that won't send me to the fact'ries? I've gotten mighty useta havin' all my fingers attached. Wouldn't need to even work if it weren't for my body likin' food so much."

His mouth opened, no doubt to tear me a new one, but the rant seemed to wither up like an old pea in his mouth. "Are you being serious? About wanting a job? Are there more of you? Oh, don't look so shocked, boy, you creatures usually travel in packs."

A job… An actual job? A little dignity? Reliable pay? Did he have to ask? Years on the street taught me to be wary, however; this man stuck me as just about as off as they come. "What kind of job are we talkin' 'bout, gov? Me and my boys don't… You know."

"Nothing demeaning and nothing illegal, I asssure you. I'll pay you each a shilling a day, plus the occasional bonus. Any of you who want it, meet me in this park tomorrow at noon, understand?"

I didn't respond, only took off running to tell the other boys of this windfall. He wasn't lying, I could tell that much. I don't know how but I could tell.

None of us knew what we were getting into, but even as the years passed, none of us regretted it.


	12. Death

_AN: Er, wow… I honestly had something else entirely planned for this prompt, but I just finished watching the entire first season of "Pushing Daisies" in one day, wrote this for my own amusement under the assumption that it would never know the glow of the Internet, and then entirely forgot my first idea. Feel free to be confused, although I very highly recommend "Pushing Daisies". It's like if Tim Burton directed "Monk". Characters used from the show belong to their creator, and though they also belong in the present, for the moment they are set in Victorian times._

When Holmes asked me to fetch the terrier under the claim that I had not done as asked, I blinked. "Holmes, I put that dog to sleep this morning and I buried it under the rosebush."

The detective cocked his brown into a queer expression. "Watson, old chap, I think your souvenirs from Afghanistan are altering your memory a bit. I saw the poor mongrel when I came in."

"Perhaps it is your mind playing the tricks, for I've still got dirt on my cuffs. See?" I displayed the slightly sullied shirt that I had not deemed dirty enough to change out of.

Lestrade was looking back and forth between us, blinking, no doubt thinking one or both of us had lost our mind. "… So is the dog dead or alive?"

"Dead!" I insisted at the same time Holmes proclaimed "Alive!"

"Watson, for god's sake," Holmes all but growled. "The animal is likely still spread out in the kitchen awaiting its own demise. Go down and check, and if it is indeed still with us bring it back up. After we are through here, I believe you are desperately needing of rest…"

Glaring at the man who believed me to be a feeble-minded idiot, I trudged down the stairs, scanning the rooms that led me to the kitchen. When I reached it, however, there was the miserable creature I had injected with a syringe full of enough morphine to kill a dog thrice its size, panting laboriously on the tiles, tongue lolling out of its snowy muzzle, glazed eyes barely rolling towards me upon my entrance. There was a great amount of dirt in its coat.

Apparently, I had not used enough drug and I had not buried it deep enough.

__

It was dead!

my inner voice hissed, angry and affronted. _You checked its pulse no less than half a dozen times, you held your watch face before its nose and mouth and it remained unmisted. You used enough drug to kill yourself, let alone a dog that size! And furthermore, how did a creature so ailing dig its way out of a hole that was a good four feet deep?_

I grabbed an old towel from underneath the sink, getting as much dirt as I could from the fading animal's fur. It was easier to tell myself that I had indeed only killed and laid to rest the dog in a dream, and the dirt on my cuffs had come from elsewhere. Anywhere else, really. Those questions did not need to be answered, nor would any of the words spoken or thought about he confusion make it into even the first draft of "A Study in Scarlet".

Still, I could not help but wonder what had happened between the morning and the evening.

****

This is what happened between the morning and the evening, in the time normally referred to as the afternoon.

"I don't mind digging up somebody else's yard while they're out, I don't mind the fact that I might get my ass thrown in jail for it, I just wish somebody would shut that damn dog up!" fumed Emerson Cod, private investigator, as he tossed shovel after shovel of earth behind him.

There was a rather robust husky dog growling at them from across the street, but apparently its owners and its owners' neighbours were used to it, for no one came to investigate. Luckily for them.

"You'd better hurry it up," noted the woman standing outside the hole. She wore a veil that covered her face, though not out of mourning. She could well be mourning, but it was more to hide her identity. People tended to ask questions when someone or something that was supposed to be dead was not.

"I keep telling you," grumbled Emerson with a glare towards the pie maker. "Stop bringing the dead girl along!"

"She's not dead. Anymore." The humble pie maker slash private investigator's associate, Ned, was doing the best digging he could do. He suddenly paused, however. "Oh… Dead thing…Fresh dead thing. Emerson, would you…"

The dark man grabbed the fresh body by the tail. "It's… a terrier. This is what the dug-up soil was for. A dead terrier. Dead girl, are you one hundred percent sure this is our address?"

The girl that Ned called Chuck consulted the slip of paper once more. "… Now that you mention it, Emerson, this… May not be the right street." She glanced at the dead dog. "Ironically enough, we're looking for Barker Street."

"Again, you save the day!" snapped the inspector, tossing the canine corpse behind him in frustration. The dog hit Ned dead centre in the forehead, however, bouncing off and onto the ground, a warm, golden glow that went unnoticed by the three humans encompassing it.

****

Ned the pie marker has three rules. The first rule is that whenever he touches something dead, it comes to life.

"Don't get mad at Chuck," sighed the pie marker, rubbing his forehead, wanting to make peace between the two even though he entertained fantasies of hitting both over the head with the shovel. "We'd better rebury that dog and get over to Barker Street. That murder victim isn't going to start talking on its own."

With a sigh, Emerson reached behind to grab the terrier, only to see it shuffling off towards the house. "Oh _dammit_! Ned, we've got a breather…!"

"Oh, not good…" The scrawny man attempted to scramble out of the hole, falling back several times before the hefty investigator boosted him up.

"Get that thing…!"

He fumbled after the creature, hands waving out, attempting to merely brush it with one of his fingers.

****

Rule number two is that the first touch is life, but the second touch is death. Another touch sends the object back to death forever.

The terrier, no matter how feeble, managed to hobble its way into the dog door in the back of the house. The main door was locked.

"Not good," whispered Ned, glancing down at his pocket watch.

****

Rule number three states that if any reanimated thing remains alive for more than sixty seconds, one minute, something else in proximity and of equal life must die.

Emerson looked up, tilting his head. "… That dog stopped barking, Ned."

"Fill in the hole," cringing the pie maker. "And let's get out of here. Now."

Chuck nodded her agreement, quickly snatching up a shovel and beginning to fill. Having come back from the dead herself, she only hoped that the dog's owners would not have a heart attack when the beloved pet returned.


	13. Stage Parents

_AN: I had a lot of difficulty thinking what to write for this prompt until I did a writing exercise of putting an original character in different times in their future. Ended up with this scenario, and then the requirements of the prompt fell into place._

Eve Johanna Holmes had been drawing longer than she had been writing. Until her legal guardian had first written her name before her, communication through anything other than rough drawings was as remote a concept as actual speech. She could write perfectly well now, better than most ten-year-olds in fact, but the drawing continued. She used more sophisticated mediums than her fingers and dirt now, of course (though she still had that first pack of crayons, reduced to stubs now, tucked into a memento box under her bed).

She had experimented with cheaper paints at school, of course, but her first real watercolour set was one of professional quality and had come from an unexpected source. The girl, still five at the time, had been left at Scotland Yard while Holmes had gone directly from record room to the streets. Inspector Lestrade, unsure what one was supposed to do with a child, had cracked open one of the older evidence lockers to see if there was anything to occupy her with.

They stumbled across a fine leather satchel containing a beautiful palate of the dried paints and a notebook nearly full of watercolour paper. Lestrade had gifted it onto her, tossing out the tag that betrayed its reason for being there in the first place (after five years, the blood on the satchel strap had been barely noticeable). Her interest in art had gone from there, and no matter how much Mycroft fretted that the charcoal and oils were going to destroy his floors, she received both moral and financial support from her protectors, who all agreed she needed an outlet besides her ballet classes in which to channel her emotions.

Holmes was the most enthusiastic, insisting she work hard at her charcoal and pencil portraits. "Because God knows they need some decent criminal artists at Scotland Yard," he had smiled ruefully upon observing each attempt.

The detective was her companion now, and even though he was the most relaxed with the girl of the three he kept a sharp eye on her as her neck craned to see every sight in the huge Parisian lobby. It was her first visit to the city, and between that and her excitement over the amateur art competition that brought her there, he didn't want her to wander off absentmindedly and then find herself alone.

"We'll be able to go up to the room as soon as Watson makes sure all your paintings got here," Holmes told the girl, though he wondered how much or how little she heard. "After that I think they want you all in the conference room for the displaying instructions, and…"

"Why, if my eyes do not trick me…!"

Sherlock Holmes spun to see a tall man, not as tall as him but similarly thin (although this man seemed to be mostly leg, though perhaps that was the effect of the pinstripes he was wearing). A hat was cocked carelessly over devil-may-care dark red hair, green eyes glinting out like those of a too-curious cat. The combined efforts of these traits formed Francois le Villard.

The English detective's brow lowered. "Le Villard."

The French detective mocked his expression. "Holmes. Now that we have confirmed that our names are as they always have been, what brings you here? I know of no case that requires your attention."

"No case. Eve, here…" With this he scooted her forward a bit like someone displaying a trophy. "Has won a spot in the art competition being held here."

"La vérité? Why, M. Holmes, such a trick of fate! My son is in the competition as well! Dire bonjour, Emanuel!"

The black-haired boy by his side, green eyes like his father, murmured out a greeting.

"He does not speak much English, not yet." The man glanced towards the young girl, a similar age to his own offspring. "But then, from what I hear, he speaks more English than she, oui?"

Holmes's steel gaze lowered. "Eve is going to score higher than your boy, I believe, if she does not win this entire thing."

"A girl? Hah! Hardly. My Emanuel can paint like da Vinci!"

"Hopefully he can paint better than his father can investigate. Don't make me remind you about Lourdes, le Villard!"

As the two snapped back and forth at one another, Emanuel la Villar regarded the competition with an almost amused expression that held just enough smugness to make the girl clench her teeth. "Votre père ressemble à une araignée."

Mycroft has begun teaching her French for quite some time. She snatched her small notebook from her coat pocket, writing the message before displaying it to the haughty creature. Les cheveux de votre père ont l'air d'un bout du canard. 

Emanuel scowled. "Au moins je peux parler."

Ah, mais pouvez-vous cesser?   
_  
AN: If my Grade 9 French is to be trusted, the end dialouge runs as follows:_

"Your father resembles a spider."

"Your father's hair looks like the end of a duck."

"At least I can speak."

"Ah, but can you stop?"


	14. Timeline

_1864_

John Watson was ten years old when his mother died. It was a terrible age to have a parent pass on; one was old enough to remember the event with sickening clarity and yet not quite old enough to fully grasp the concept of death being a natural if not upsetting end and being decidedly final.

No matter how many times their father, a very loving man who was able to remain strong for his boys even though he could feel the fine cracks on his heart wedged wider every day, explained to John that his mother was dying, the boy would linger by her beside and watch her laboured sleep, wondering when she would be well enough to play with him. She had been sick many times before, but she had always recovered. He was too young to notice that each recovery came with a little strength, a little life, lost, until the woman who had once been quite pretty and wonderfully full of energy was little more than a shell, able to smile weakly but little else in the presence of her cherished youngest son.

The thing John remembered most after the fact was the condition of Edward, his stuffed bear. It was subjected to the tears and worn spots the toys of little boys were often subjective to. His mother had always mended him, but now he grew worse alongside her. He eventually put Edward in a box in his closet, only looking at him, never again playing with him. Something in his undeveloped logic believed that if Edward stopped getting worse, so would his mother.

Andrew Watson was fifteen when his mother died. Fifteen is a worse age than ten to be when a parent passes on. If a ten-year-old breaks a vase in frustration of inevitable death, everyone pities the child for his pain. If a fifteen-year-old takes to the bottle for the very first time to try to numb the pain of watching ones mother fade away like a cut lily left in the sun, there was precious little sympathy for him.

John was sleeping peacefully when the doctor came to pronounce his mother dead of natural causes, blissfully unaware that his life would change upon his waking.

Andrew was drinking, having been there for her last breath. He was less and less aware with each burning sip that anything was wrong or that anything would ever be wrong again.

John Watson lost both his mother and the his brother as he knew him while he slept.

_1873_

Nine years passed and Lucas Watson passed away. His death had been mercifully brief; a quick heart attack that was painful only to those still alive.

John had not expected Andrew to attend the funeral or else he would have asked someone to watch for him and keep him from the chapel. A very cruel gesture, to keep a son from his father's last service, but John Watson did not exercise cruelty without true reason.

He staggered in during the middle of the service and sat near the back. Had he tried to sit by his little brother, his little brother might have broken his nose.

Instead, John let him be. He looked drunk, but he was not being distributive and he did not want to cause a scene at his father's funeral. A part of him hoped his brother shared his grief, and upon sobering up they could talk for a bit between then and the next bottle of cheap whiskey.

He should have been on his guard, he later thought, as he watched his brother shuffle up like any other mourner to touch the top of the casket in respect (it being a closed casket service; Lucas Watson has always found displaying a body at either wake or funeral far too morbid). John could not have been expected to keep an eye on his older brother. He was nineteen and grieving, and besides that, his brother was twenty-four, supposedly old enough to be responsible.

Andrew Watson made it to the front of the church just fine, but then a wave of vertigo commonly associated with excessive amounts of alcohol struck him like a barrage of salt water. His arms flailed out for any support he could grasp. His hand came heavily upon the corner of the coffin and he fell upon it. The support splintered, sending the polished box containing his father's earthly remains teetering and crashing to the floor of the chapel.

The casket's latched held, John was always thankful for that. Two of their second cousins (or were they third) took charge of the wayward son and escorted him outside with as much force as they would not need to explain later. They left him far enough away so that he could not do the family any more damage.

John remained seated in the uncomfortable pew, not truly seeing the minister and a curator scramble for a chair to prop the coffin of Lucas Watson back up, nor did he truly hear the sympathies of his various relatives, many of whom he had never seen before and more of which he would never see again.

John marched into Afghanistan. Andrew crawled back to his bottles.

_1885_

Jezail bullets proved less deadly than Scottish moonshine. Andrew Watson reached thirty-six and he did not get any older.

John Watson was thirty-one and beyond the need for a big brother, in his solemn opinion. He was not entirely surprised to hear of his brother's death, nor was he entirely saddened. He thought of the death as a very long terminal illness beginning with the death of their mother and claiming its life with their father.

Andrew had been dead to him the day their father's coffin had fallen. He had worn mourning clothes from them both, he felt no compulsion to mourn a man who had been dead to him for many years.

If John was apathetic, even relieved, by the death of his brother, logic would dictate that he would not carry about his brother's watch, one of the few things Andrew had left to be inherited. Logically, this implied he was in fact affected by the loss of Andrew Watson.

Not wanting to deal with such logic, the doctor spoke not a word on the matter to Sherlock Holmes.

_1887_

Sherlock Holmes had not known of the existence of his friend's brother.

In all fairness, he could not be insulted or hurt, for John Watson did not know of the existence of his friend's brother, and so unable to feel shunned from this all-important information, he instead berated himself and his so-called powers of observation for missing such a crucial point of a personality portfolio.

It had taken an idle distraction to draw his attention to the fact. Had Watson given him the watch wanting him to know of his brother's birth and death without having to speak of it himself, to stir up the long-settled silt and muddy the waters of his good nature after so many years? Or had he not expected him to probe so deep and only used the watch as a shiny bauble to keep his fingers busy with something other than a syringe?

He thought of his own reasons for not telling Watson of Mycroft. In the beginning, it had been a simple matter of trust. He would not put it past an assassin to befriend the brother of a very important man to gain access to him. As the time passed, however, it was more about pride. He hated to relish praise, but he often felt his brightest when his friend extolled him for his gifts. If he released the information that not all the solutions were his own, would Watson question if he bent the truth to give himself more credit?

Under the judgemental lens of his friendship with the observed, the detective was dismayed to discover that he could not deduce the reason why he had not been given so much as an inkling about this brother. Had he been ashamed, thinking his friend would see in him a piece of his alcoholic brother? Or merely tight-lipped, keeping a family skeleton firmly in the closet?

It was over breakfast tea that the truth came out without Holmes even having to pry.

"I did not tell you about Andrew," Watson spoke softly, hazel gaze entirely level on his almost startled friend. "Because I was pitied with the death of each of my parents, I was pitied for being the brother of a failure, and I was pitied from the time I was shot and carted back to London. I did not need pity from you, dear friend. I did not want pity from you, because by being treated as a capable man by my first new friend, I believed in my new life, I would hold no pity for myself."

The detective did not comment upon this string of faulty logic, for even he was forced to admit that every once in a blue moon, fragments of emotion existed outside the confines of logic.


	15. Here There Be Tygers

"There's a tiger in our tent."

No sane person ever wanted to hear those words, and least of all they wanted to hear them while they were being shaken awake by a fellow soldier while camped out in the middle of the jungle where it seemed the Creator stored all the bits left over from Genesis, not even He being able to figure out what to do with plants that could bite you and bugs the size of common beetles that would cause the greatest pain imaginable if one was stung by them.

My mumbled response ran along the same lines as "Whadaomeanigerinnaten?"

Franklin Hitch, a usually unshakeable man who had been a soldier before a doctor and was now both in one, was not a man easily shaken, and so I began to develop a great ball of lead in my stomach when I saw he was quite shaken. "What do you think I mean, Watson!"

I rubbed the last of light sleep from my eyes (one really never slept heavily when you could feel the eyes of predators and the enemy winking out at you from the inky darkness). Sure enough, there was a fuzzy orange head poking in the front flap of our tent, yellow eyes glinting sharply yet with that softness that young animals always seemed to possess no matter how deadly.

"What am I supposed to do?" I hissed, careful not to make any sudden movements as two oversized paws padded in and the stripped killer sniffed at previously unknown scents of tobacco and human fear.

"What do you think!" Hitch exclaimed, backing as far as he could towards the opposite end. Rather useless, considering even young tigers were professionals at pouncing. "Shoot it!"

That did indeed seem to be the obvious solution. I fumbled for my rifle which every man in the army was instructed not to sleep with loaded but everyone did anyway. The man who wrote those safety guidelines sat behind a desk in London, not in a tent with tigers in it.

Once I got it levelled at the beastie she was all the way inside the tent, sniffing about, tail twitching like an overgrown tabby. Everything in my body told me to pull the trigger, but somehow I could not.

"What the hell are you waiting for!" Hitch barked, eyes all but bulging in his skull. "Kill it, man!"

"I… I can't…" I sighed, lowering the rifle.

"Why not?!"

"She… She reminds me of a kitten I had as a boy. Belle. They're both orange with stripes and they both have that white splotch on their chest, see…?" This was terribly embarrassing, but an embarrassing reason was better than none at all. "I nearly died of grief when Belle was trampled by the neighbour's horse and my father had to put her down. I… I can't shoot her, Hitch. It's ridiculous, but I can't."

She was rolling about on her back now, big paws splayed happily, tail twitching about as she relished the entirely new feel of manmade material. With her tongue lolling out between pointy teeth, she almost looked like nothing more than a big housecat.

The cub rolled back over, plodding towards us. Hitch gave a scream of fright but I remained steady, reaching out to gingerly touch the creature's head. Permitted to do as such, I rubbed its ears gently, producing no normal purr but a gentle rollicking sound in the back of her throat.

"See, Hitch? As gentle as a kitten."

"But is her mother…?"

I looked up, mouth open to pose a question but quickly shut it. There was a full-grown tiger in our tent. This one was not nearly so adorable. Over six hundred pounds of coiled muscle was far from adorable after all.

Snarling with her tail whipping about, the huge female grabbed my little friend by the scruff of her striped neck with the gentleness of a butler handling a Ming vase, turned, and marched out of our humble abode.

There was silence, both of us frozen with fear for a good many moments, and then Hitch spoke. "When we tell this story in later years, we blew the thing's face off. Agreed?"

"Agreed."


	16. Unaesthetic

"Policemen are rather… unaesthetic, aren't they?"

Mycroft Holmes had been thinking of the important things; how he was going to keep England from invading a northern section of India, the records he had to get rid of if his brother was to remain a free man, and to pick up breakfast tea on his way home. This rather abstract statement jarred him from his thoughts. "Excuse me?"

"I said your policemen are rather unaesthetic," repeated Henry Myers, an American senator intent on seeing the "real London", as long as the real parts of London were clean and not the least bit dangerous. He stuck his hands into his pockets, grinning at his reluctant tour guide. "You know, not visually pleasing."

"I know what unaesthetic means," Mycroft nearly snapped while reminding himself that one had to be nice to the Americans with political power. He often saw America as a mere child of great England, but he had seen too many cases in which children killed their parents to not be wary. "I mean, why are they so? They're policemen, they're rather useful. In case of crimes and such."

"Oh, no doubt," the American agreed heartily. "But they just don't blend in well with the scenery, you see? Rather jarring, rather realistic… Reminds a person of crime, and no one wants to think about crime, now, do they? They are simply not fashionable."

Mycroft gritted his teeth. This was the man who had asked where he could see a good game of football in London, adding "Not the foot kind of football, the ball kind of football." Honestly. "What do your expect the city to do, eliminate the police officers in favour of style?"

"It's a sacrifice, yes, but some must be made if a city is to be appealing."

Mycroft Holmes was sure there were plenty of decent people living in and originating from the United States, but at the moment he hated Americans.


	17. The Post Match

"Holmes, I have to know now before I pay for the third month's rent; is this going to be a regular occurrence?"

The detective laughed even though it made his ribs practically groan in protest. He had won the fight and he knew thanks to the good doctor that his ribcage hadn't been shattered as he had first thought, but he would not at all be surprised if they were not all a little less bowed than before.

"No, doctor, I do not think it will be," he replied as best he could through a swelling lip.

Watson paused, an unravelling roll of gauze lying limply in his hand like a white, cross-hatched boa, ready to constrict against his body not to choke and consume him but rather to staunch the laceration on his chest caused by the loose grommet on his opponent's glove.

Good sport that he was, McMurdo had apologized for that oversight. Or Holmes thought he had, in any case. His speech had been rather hard to make out after that last round, but he was seemed amiable enough. Unless he had hit him so hard his lips turned up even in a frown.

"You don't think it will be?" the doctor demanded, glare as stern as any schoolmaster with a room full of unruly and disrespectful boys.

Holmes cringed. "I mean it shouldn't happen again. Do injuries taken during cases count?"

A long sigh as the doctor set to bandaging the surprising deep gash after first bathing it thoroughly with alcohol that stung the would-be boxer more than any bees or wasps ever had. "No, because you did not instigate them. Willingly beating the living daylights out of another man for nothing but sport is so cotton-brained I'm surprised you would take part in such an event."

"It's the rush you get from it, Watson…" he sighed, trying to keep his expressions of pain to a minimum. He could hardly argue that the wounds were not his fault, and therefore he bore them without complaint. "It's the thrill of the fight, you understand?"

Pressing a large chunk of ice wrapped in a handkerchief to his friend's goose-egged head and instructing him to hold it there, he began to replace the staples of any doctor into his black bag. "I've had quite enough of fighting to last me a lifetime."

Holmes's face fell so sharply one could observe it. "Oh… Well, you would have, wouldn't you…?" He sighed, shifting the ice. "I promise I won't get into any more boxing matches if it means you'll continue to split the rent with me, chap. I'm finding you to be a most interesting individual."

Despite himself, Watson smiled. "I reciprocate your feelings ten fold. And I mean it, Holmes. Keep out of the ring, please? You could have broken your jaw."

He snorted in a rather cocky manner like a bantam rooster scratching the dirt. "I was far more likely to have broken his jaw. I have a rather neat upper-cut, as it so happens."

"I hope I never see it," replied the doctor, giving his friend a pat on the shoulder before heading into his bedroom for some well-deserved sleep.


	18. Memory

"You know, Holmes," I began, frowning slightly as a thought flitted aimlessly across my mind like a water beetle zipping back and forth on the top of the lake water. It was not a terribly important thought, but I felt it should be given its limelight before it disappearing, fading into the air about us as the trail of Holmes's tobacco smoke did. "When we visited Sholto's grounds, I commented that they looked like something I'd observed before…"

"Sholto? That was… Dear god, years and years ago? And you think of it now?"

"There's a reason why, Holmes. That recent business in the Boscombe Valley dealt with Ballarat."

"Is this going somewhere, Watson?" he sighed from behind his paper where he was no doubt buried in those silly misery columns of his.

"A-ha!" I exclaimed, resisting the urge to leap out of my chair, reminding myself that I was having a friendly chat with my dearest friend, not interrogating a criminal (though sometimes the two acts were so close in nature…). "You really don't remember, do you? I said Sholto's grounds looked like a hillside in Ballarat!"

A slight redness crossed his face, making it sorely obvious I had stumbled upon one of his buttons. He was silent, however, giving me no clue as to which one.

"I want to know why, Holmes. What is it, some sort of conspiracy? Mycroft is involved, isn't he?"

There was a dramatic arch of those grey eyes. "You'll not let me be until I answer, will you?"

"You know me too well, old friend."

"Very well, then," he folded with a slight sigh, halving his paper and balancing it to the side of him on the arm of his much-worn chair, placing the smouldering remains of his pipe on the table. "During the first year of your marriage, I went on what I believed would be a routine case, finding a man who had broken into a lord's house and stolen a ring not worth much money but of tremendous sentimental value to my client. I made a mistake in thinking the man would be alone. Turns out his two brothers were in the city and staying with him, and they were much stronger than my target."

I cringed, eyeing him and seeing the truth upon his sharp features. "I will not like where this goes, will I?"

"I doubt it. God knows I did not. At one point, one of them stuck me over the head with what I believed might have been a shovel. I make this assumption based on the fact that the next morning the back of my head felt rather flat, because I do not remember what happened, only that I woke up to a doctor Mrs. Hudson had summoned tending to me. What a shovel was doing in an urban apartment I have no idea… I did not tell you because I knew how you would worry. Your marriage was new; I did not want to deprive Mrs. Watson of your full attention at such a crucial time."

Years after the fact, I was still worrying for him. There was yet another emotion churning, however; gratitude. Holmes had wanted my marriage to succeed, even at the cost of losing his Boswell's response to his every beck and call. The man was not as selfish as I had often pegged him.

"What does this have to do with Ballarat, Holmes?" I questioned, frowning with burning curiosity rubbed off onto me from so much time spent with the man before me.

"Here's the other thing I knew would worry you," he sighed, gaze now on his dying pipe, looking regretful but truly juts avoiding my eyes. "Ever since then, there have been bits in the past that are a little… fuzzy. It's not a true problem, God knows they may even be normal by most person's standards and they've never really affected me… Small things, you see, like you mentioning Ballarat. Mycroft's caught more, he suspected something when I couldn't recall the name of one of my old college professors…."

"Dear God, Holmes!" I could not help but be a bit loud in this exclamation. How could he not have told me of something so serious? "Were you examined? Do you ever forget any new memories?"

"I went to one of the Whitehall doctors and he said it was perfectly normal but there was nothing to be done about it. And no, I've never forgotten anything new. This may please you, Watson; I actually read through your stories to fill in some of the wider gaps. Some of them were… less than sensationalist prattle."

The man comforted me and criticized me in the same breath; at least I knew he was still the same old Sherlock Holmes. "I understand not wanting to alarm me, but do inform me of events like this in the future, hmm?"

He gave a tight but genuine smile. "Of course I will…" He paused, face contorting into a puzzled expression when he should have said my name.

My own face paled. "Holmes…?"

The confusion gave way to a slice of a grin. "Honestly, Watson, you're far too gullible."

I found myself wishing our own flat had a shovel handy.


	19. What You Need

"I've asked you many times, Mr. Sherman, and each time you refuse to sell me Toby or tell me why you will not."

Mr. Sherman was squirming under my friend's glare, and I could have told him that standing between the Great Detective and something he desired was not something a person often wished to do. Perhaps the man simply wanted to continue collecting money for Toby's use, but the lump sum he was being offered for the unhandsome creature thumping his tail near Holmes's feet was truly mind-boggling.

Myself, I was merely trying to keep away from the badger after having been stared daggers at once I reminded Holmes that no dog living in 221 Baker Street had ever done well there.

"Mr. Holmes, if I owned the dog myself I'd sell him to you!" protested the man, his face displaying a struggle to decide his alliance to either his purse or Toby's true owner. "But his ownership belongs to another. He is often away at school, but when he comes home, Toby's the reason he does."

Holmes scowled, irritation growing at the fact that the dog was owned by some university student, likely haughty and stubborn (as if he was one to talk). "School should not be in session now, so why don't you fetch the man, Sherman? Let him see me and see my money and let him make his own decisions."

A wave of paleness washed over the man. "Mr. Holmes, it's rather late…"

"Not so late as the banks are sleeping. You know where he is? Fetch him!"

Although Toby's ears perked at the command 'fetch', it was Sherman who rose, trudging off down the long, dim hallway, presumably to take the back way out.

"A student will likely have tuition bills to sway his empty little head," smirked Holmes, celebrating his anticipated victory by giving Toby's belly a thorough scratching.

The animal, oblivious to the conflict his unique gifts were causing, wriggled about upon the floor like a snake, his stubby back legs kicking out in pure delight and his long ears splayed out to make him appear like a clumsy evolutional cousin of a hare that did not last long enough to make it into the texts of Mr. Darwin.

"Holmes, are you even sure you should keep a dog in the flat? You know how that dog gets when left alone, and it would be outright cruel to keep the beast in a kennel."

"I'll manage to train him, Watson," he insisted, continuing lavishing attention upon the mutt.

I declined to mention that if it were such an easy feat, my friend would tidy up out shared space one in a blue moon without being practically threatened at knifepoint.

We were both startled and surprised when Mr. Sherman emerged not three minutes later, a small boy approximately ten, skittish and rubbing sleep from his eyes having obviously been dressed in a hurry, behind him. Apparently the beast-keeper had not left his own home.

"My nephew Andrew," he introduced the golden-haired boy softly. "He's been in my care since he was seven. His parents were killed in the same fire that…" He trailed off, only gesturing towards the child again.

It was only when young Andrew stopped rubbing his eyes that we saw the horrid burn scars about his face. The eyes that were directed upon us had obviously not seen anything save darkness for a very, very long time.

Toby instantly sprung to his feet, waddling over to the boy, who crouched and allowed himself to be woken more thoroughly by the dog's rough tongue about his face. After all, what cared a dog for scars or any kind of handicap? A boy was a boy, a creature to throw sticks and slip treats, no matter his circumstance.

Holmes's mouth was opening and closing, but no sound was coming forth. His smirk was most certainly gone, and I had a feeling it was not likely to return that night.

"He goes to a school for the blind most of the time, sirs, a luxury only the sale of his parents' home made possible. Andrew, Mr. Holmes here is offering to buy Toby for a very generous sum, as I told you. To help him with his work."

Andrew threw his arms around the mongrel's neck. I suspected the only reason tears were not streaming down his scared cheeks was that his ducts had been damaged in the fire. "Oh, Mr. Holmes… Not Toby…! Uncle gave him to me specially just after… After I came to live here… Our dorm mother, she reads us from Dr. Watson's book when we're behaved and you're so good… You don't really need to take Toby away to put away bed men, do you…?"

As an avid reader and now a published writer, I have many words for many facial expressions at my disposal, and yet despite this, I still cannot find a proper description for the look upon my friend's face at that moment."

"N-No, I suppose I don't," he finally stammered out, pale features flushing with red. "Toby is rather useful I will admit, but I should be relying on my own skills more often, shouldn't I?"

"My teachers say when you do something on your own, it makes you stronger," the little blind boy grinned with a nod, Toby still nuzzling at him like a parent hound with a pup. "You can still use him when you really need him, Mr. Holmes; Toby likes getting out and sniffing. But… But could Dr. Watson not mention him in your stories any longer?"

This rather surprised me; I had thought a boy would delight in hearing of his beloved pet being known all over the country. "And why would you want that, lad?"

The look in his sightless eyes (if there could be such a thing) was enough to crack a heart of stone in two. "Because if people know he's so special, then everyone might want Toby, and some of the people who want him might not be as nice as you."

"Then not another word will be printed of him," I assured the boy, hoping he could hear my smile in my voice.

"I suppose that finishes our business here," spoke Holmes, incredibly stiff-collared all of a sudden. "Our apologies for disturbing you so late. Mr. Sherman, Master Andrew. … Toby." He all but yanked me out of the store as I was tipping my hat to Mr. Sherman, taking me dangerously close to the badger once more before we both went out the front door.

"Such a shrewd businessman," I smirked as we headed for home. "Heartless brain, my foot."

"The child was _blind_, Watson! What the devil do you suppose I would have done?!"


	20. Gunplay

The seven-year-old was buried in the quilt, only his mop of darkening blond hair visible, and even this was hard to spot in the innermost corner of the closet. Tears licked at his face as he sobbed without the confines of the patchwork, and at the moment he did not care if he never emerged from his hiding place.

He heard heavy footsteps. Expensive shoes. A better quality than Sherlock ever wanted because the young Holmes always wore or ruined his in mere months. Almost grown-up shoes; his brother was newly thirteen and would be in boarding school the next year.

The closet door opened and the quilt was gently pried away from his grasping hands. "Sherlock, no one is angry with you. Mother and Father are merely scared to death. You could have killed yourself, do you know that? Some things are locked up for a reason other than to test your handiness with a bobby pin."

His sobbing increased to a wail to rival a professional mourner. "I'm angry with me! I disobeyed Father and… And I k-killed…" The rest of his sentence was lost in childish weeping, which was rather uncharacteristic for the child in question.

Such self-directed hate from one so young, Mycroft could not help but to observe as he first crouched and then sat upon the floor to reach his brother's eye level. True, they were baptized Catholic, but this was ridiculous.

"Sherlock, I'm not going to tell you that it wasn't your fault that cat is dead," he began, hoping he possessed the strength to avert this premature spiral of depression. "You're right, you disobeyed Father, and because of that the cat…"

"Carlotta."

"Pardon?"

"Her name was Carlotta."

"Since when?"

"Since now!" the young boy insisted, small hands balling into fists. "She should have a name, not be just any old barn cat!"

Carlotta, as she was now dubbed, had in fact been just any old barn cat. The neighbour's barn cat, to be precise, who had picked the wrong time to wander onto the Holmes estate. Despite having been warned countless upon countless occasions to keep away from the rifles in the game room and the pistol double-locked in Sigerson Holmes's study, Sherlock's curious nature had gotten the better of him and he had picked the locks and fetched the pistol and several bullets.

He had been messing about out in the yard, not actually firing the pistol for fear that someone would hear it but merely pretending. He was destined to be a detective, he had himself convinced, and detectives in the stories were always waving their pistols about.

The boy had pulled the trigger by accident, there was no mistake in that. It had not been aimed at anything in particular, and it had been a wonder he had not shot himself. Less of a wonder was the unsuspecting cat, to be named Carlotta post-mortem, was napping in the direct path of the bullet. The only upside was that the animal had no suffered. The one who suffered was the young Sherlock Holmes upon seeing his error.

"I'm never touching a gun again…!" he all but bawled, wrapping the quilt more tightly around his small body. "I'm not being a detective at all!"

Mycroft would have praised the boy for denouncing the unrealistic profession had it been in any other context. Now, however, he merely pulled his little brother towards him. "You don't mean that, Sherlock. There's no rule that says you have to use a gun all the time."

Sherlock glared through reddened eyes, wiping his nose with the back of his sleeve. "But I will have to use one. For protection."

"If you learn how to use a pistol properly, Sherlock, The more aptly you wield one, the less chance of accident there is. And there are forms of unarmed combat to decrease the use of it. Father will teach you. If you ask. Come now, won't you stop crying?"

The younger hugged his brother tightly as he would be ashamed to do anywhere else except the dark corner of a closet. At seven, he felt himself too old to act like a child, but even the strongest of convictions had relapses.

The two brothers built a small casket to bury Carlotta in. Mycroft, no carpenter and reading the instructions out of a book, ended up breaking two of his fingers but only cursed when his brother had left him. Over the years, Sherlock Holmes became a master marksman. He learned to never keep live ammunition in the chambers, to never take more bullets than he thought he might use, and even after such conditioning, was much more at ease with casual target practise than drawing his weapon in the field. It only took one mistake to end a life; he had learned that lesson early on.

Eventually, there came a man unafraid to use a gun, and Holmes was amazed at how Fate had delivered a companion so convenient. Except in rare circumstances, he was more than willing to let Watson be the bearer of arms.

His stories became proof that one did not have to wave a pistol about to be a true detective, but on the long nights spent trudging through paperwork, Holmes had to admit that gunplay made the stories much more interesting.


	21. Balloonatics

There is a knothole in the floor of 221b, off in the corner of the dining room. It is beneath a cabinet, so it is not readily visible and therefore has never been filled by the flat's inhabitants. The other side of the knothole is in the ceiling of Mrs. Hudson's parlour, and thus while she would never eavesdrop, when the conversation above reaches higher volumes she can usually make out its content quite clearly.

"No."

"Oh, but Watson…"

"Absolutely not. This discussion has officially ended, Holmes."

"You're the one who suggested we take a holiday!"

"A relaxing holiday! Not some crazy joyride!"

"I'd hardly call it a joyride, Watson, it's all very controlled, and it would only be one event. Think of the French countryside as seen from up in the sky!"

"Think of crashing into the French countryside in a fiery wreckage of carnage and wicker."

"You know, if I wanted someone who never tried anything new to be a constant companion, I would have simply roomed with Mycroft. Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I must have left it back in Afghanistan as I was dodging bullets and fighting for my life."

"That's a low blow and you know it."

"I'm not going ballooning with you, Holmes, and that's my final word on the matter."

"This is why we can't have nice vacations!"

People often ask Mrs. Hudson why she tolerates the worst boarders in London, and when questioned all she can do is smile and shake her head.


	22. A Little Night Music

_AN: Another one set in the universe of "Perpetual Anticipation", taking place where the story currently is. Be warned; this is as fluffy as cotton candy and just as likely to give you cavities._

It was not that Holmes hated his sister-in-law, it was merely that he knew his brother deserved someone a bit more… unique.

Mycroft Holmes was a singularly intelligent man, the mind of an ancient muse buried in his unassuming exterior. He was indispensable to the government and the country, and his replacement, when the time came, would be a hard member of society to locate. Even his given name was quite out of the ordinary, par the family tradition.

And on the other hand, one had the girl. Ann Marie Sophia, a common name for a common woman. She was wonderful at domestic tasks, as was every other aristocratic girl coming out of a finishing school. She was beautiful, but so were many others. She loved his brother, both she and Mycroft claimed this, and yet he had the feeling the girl was one to love whomever she ended up with. She was generally dull, and yet it was she who was bearing the next generation of the Holmes family.

And yet Holmes had to admit, he was coming to tolerate her. He had always wanted a little sister, deep down, to torture with jabs and hair-pulling, and he supposed he could see why Mycroft enjoyed her bland mindset; after a day of number-crunching and difficult problems, coming home to be made to think of nothing in conversation with her had to be pleasant for his sedentary personality.

He only hoped that the children would take after their better contributor in intellect; some empty-headed, upper-crust snob would only be an insult to the Holmes name.

Speaking of the yet-to-be child, though not yet born to cry out in the night it was already causing its mother grief. Its movements in the womb had been bordering violence lately and the babe had been keeping it up its antics past limits of the expected endurance of a foetus.

Normally, the girl's discomfort would be none of his concern, but his brother had reserved their roles, going off to chase criminals while leaving him in the domestic setting, and her pacing was maddening him.

That, and while his sympathies to the maladies of women usually consisted of "Well, they chose to have the child, to wear such infernal undergarments, to buy such impractical shoes…" and the like, this particular woman was carrying his nephew (he searched for traces of an affair often yet had not seen them, after all), and it was simply not healthy for a person to be so stressed.

When she finally lay upon the settee, hands folded over her broadening middle, he smoothly shifted from a light, springy piece into a much smoother series of improvised notes, lulling and soft. He was an observer, and so he observed which notes evoked a sigh or a fluttering of the eyes and which sent her grimacing and rubbing at her sore stomach.

Eventually her eyes closed and her hands stilled, the motion of her chest stilling in much-needed (and much-deserved) sleep.

Ann Marie Holmes had always enjoyed the violin, a fact she never mentioned to her brother-in-law whose ego did not need to be stroked. She had attempted to learn it, along with several other instruments, as a child. She had failed miserably at all of them, more to the disappointment of her mother than the girl herself. Leave such things to others… Her, she was happy with her household and her kitchen and her family.

Typical of a repressed woman, many would spit, but Lord knows not everyone could be a suffragette; they'd run out of signs and wheels to chain themselves to.

Holmes's thin fingers eventually stilled on the strings, replacing the cherished instrument in its velvet-lined case and rising, bringing a heavy quilt to the blonde's sleeping form. He spared a glance at the growing bump and, being unobserved, smiled.

"I'll teach you to play some day," he murmured in a soft voice he was not prone to using as he spread the blanket over the woman. "It will drive your parents insane."

Picturing his future nephew (fair of face, that would hurt nothing, but the glossy black hair of the Holmes family, and his father's solid name…), he curled up in the armchair his brother usually possessed, and though he tried not to he too eventually drifted off to sleep, notes that had never been played before and would never be played again echoing aimlessly in his ears.


	23. Biscuits

_AN: This one is also a 221b drabble!_

Between the two leaking windows, her favourite pale yellow dress ruined with spilled beet juice, and a chemical explosion from the worst tenant in London, when Holmes had commented that the scones she'd made were too brown on the bottom she'd hollered at them to make their own if her cooking wasn't good enough and stormed off to spent the drizzling day somewhere more sane.

Never one to pass up a challenge, the detective had demanded Watson from his editing and down into the kitchen to give the baking business the old college try.

The scones were done now, but they did not look at all as they should, judging by Mrs. Hudson's example (minus the brown bottoms). Instead of raised and light, they were rather compact and lumpy. And whiter than they ought to have been…

"They smell… different," Holmes observed with a critical sniff.

Watson grumbled, not looking forward to cleaning up the mess they had created for these twelve misshapen things. He pushed one of the lumps towards his friend. "Go on, try one."

He bit down, immediately spitting the mouthful into the bin. "I loathe to admit it, Watson, but I was wrong."

"I told you baking soda and baking powder were not the same thing, Holmes!"

The public was never told of the adventure in biscuits.


	24. Tell Me I'm Pretty

Dr. Watson knew that the virtuous of London would be all the poorer if Sherlock Holmes, master detective, was not as apt at disguises as he was. All the same, the man seemed to have no boundaries when it came to his art of shifting faces, and therefore quite a few of his costumes never made it to The Strand. More yet never made it past the sitting room. More disturbing was the tendency for the detective to unknowingly adapt to the costume, taking on traits he himself was not aware of.

It made for a disturbing evening, to say the least.

"Well…?" questioned Holmes, all but quivering with anticipation for acceptance of his newest addition in his repertoire of disguises. "What do you think of it?"

"Holmes… No."

His face fell, not only at the rejection but at the utter lack of elaboration as to why the doctor did not believe the outfit would be suitable. "No? Exactly what do you mean by no?"

Watson pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing very much to return to his writing. "I mean that no one in their right mind is going to believe that, Holmes."

"Why on earth not? I found the blue rather fetching on me."

"It's not about the colour co-ordination, Holmes, and you know it. You just have to accept that there are some roles you are physically unable to take."

"Honestly, this powder softens my jaw line…"

"Meaning it can only cut through hard fir now instead of oak," muttered the doctor, his eyes averting to his papers. Perhaps if he ignored him he would cease the charade.

"I think my nose makes for a Roman composition. There are worse looking women, Watson."

"Not many." He paused, looking back to his friend, currently clothed in a dress and full makeup, glancing back at him from the settee with a purse in hand. "… That hat is too small for you, you have it pinned in. … That's not your hat. You took that from someone."

"A wonderful deduction, my friend! Mrs. Hudson didn't have one quite of this quality, so I borrowed it sans permission from the only other woman I regularly have contact with."

"Holmes, Ann Marie is going to spear you with a pike!"

The detective delicately corrected the hat's tilt. "She's entering confinement shortly, it won't be as if she's going to need it. Besides, it suits me better."


	25. Blowing in the Wind

_AN: Sorry for another on-the-shorter-side prompt response, but I'm a little busy settling into a quiet university life of studying and attending lectures. Which I intend to get started on once the parties stop. Class of 2012! Gonna get me an X ring!_

"Oh, bugger."

The two men were standing in the sitting room, blanketed with papers. Had they been Holmes's papers, the situation would have been entirely normal. They were, however, Watson's papers, and the good doctor was on the verge of having a thrombosis.

"Look on the bright side," chirped Holmes, praying the fact that he had been the one who left the window open (truly, it was Mrs. Hudson's fault, insisting on silly, feminine things like ventilation). "At least most of them didn't blow away."

Watson glared with every iota of Scottish fury he could muster. "Holmes, do you have any idea how many papers were in that folio?!"

Glancing around the room, Holmes offered "Enough to coat the floor…?"

"It's going to be damn near impossible to get all these back in order!"

"Well, didn't you date them?"

"I dated the title pages, but not the stories themselves. Oh, for the love of god, it's going to take weeks to sort these all out…" The order would become mere guesswork…

"Ah, well… I hope the one about how you injured your leg wasn't blown away. I rather liked that one."


	26. The Ludite

"Holmes, why did we have a telephone installed?" Watson began, brows furrowed at his friend and roommate.

"I am the wrong person to ask," replied the detective. He was at his chemistry table fiddling with bromine and vinegar. "I never wanted the cursed thing to begin with."

"My foot you didn't. You were intrigued with it, took the first one we had apart and threatened to do the same to the second until I told you we won't replace it if you couldn't put it back together. You were all but giddy at the thought that you could converse with a client clear across the city."

"And now I am having second thoughts," he sighed somewhat moodily. "I find it invasive."

"You finding it invasive isn't a reason for you to unplug it and throw it in the laundry hamper!"

"Scotland Yard should not be able to contact me every moment of every day. A man cannot live on stupidity alone."

Watson held up the phone salvaged from the dirty clothes moments before Mrs. Hudson had tossed it into the tub of soapy water that no doubt would have meant its demise. "Don't do it again." His tone implied that he meant business.

Holmes scowled, cursing technology and all those who defended its miserable little give-and-take conveniences, returning to his bromine.


End file.
